To engage in a wireless connection, an access terminal typically engages in a connection-setup process with a radio access network (RAN). As part of this process, the access terminal may send a connection request to a serving RAN via a reverse link, which triggers additional connection-setup messaging between the access terminal and the RAN. As the connection-setup process proceeds, however, the RAN may send a connection-setup message (e.g., a reverse-traffic-acknowledgement message) to the access terminal via a forward link and, for some reason, not receive an expected response to the connection-setup message (e.g., a traffic-channel-complete message) from the access terminal.